The Book

Our cities drive innovation and growth, but they also propel us into housing crises and give rise to ever-greater inequality, as the super-rich displace the well-off, and the workers who run our essential services are ghettoised and pushed out to the suburbs. There is a New Urban Crisis, and it is undermining the foundations of our society.

In this bracingly original work of research and analysis, leading urbanist Richard Florida demonstrates how our cities are evolving in the twenty-first century, for good and for ill. From the world's superstar metropolises to the urban slums of the developing world, he shows how the crisis touches all of us, and sets out how we can make our cities more inclusive, ensuring prosperity for all.

Additional Information

Subject

Economics, Politics

Pages

352

Imprint

Oneworld

About the Author

Richard Florida is director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and a global research professor at New York University. He is also the author of The Rise of the Creative Class, founder of the Creative Class Group and co-founder of The Atlantic's CityLab.

Reviews

‘Richard Florida is the great pioneer thinker who first explained how the influx of creative people was reviving cities…[he] takes a hard look at the problems and, as usual, comes up with some smart new policies.'

- Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Innovators

‘Deserves to stand alongside Thomas Piketty's Capital as an essential diagnosis of our contemporary ills, and a clear-eyed prescription of how to cure them… Anyone interested in the crisis of inequality and in the vitality of our cities will want to read this book.'

- Steven Johnson, bestselling author of How We Got To Now

‘A powerful account - packed with evidence - of the forces driving urban segregation and deepening inequality and the way private wealth and power outflanks the poor and powerless.'

- Stewart Lansley, author of A Sharing Economy and co-author of Breadline Britain

‘Like the superstar cities it describes, this book is dense, complex and stimulating. Florida's well-researched and fluent exposé of inequality is a wake-up call to all the major actors engaged in planning, designing and managing cities in the 21st century.'

- Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies, London School of Economics

‘Using data as his torch, Richard Florida shines a light on one of the great challenges of our century.'

- Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City

‘Bracingly confronts this tension between big-city elites and the urban underclass.'

- Wall Street Journal

‘The New Urban Crisis is well worth reading for the original research, clear-headed critique and the skilled analysis of solid data… Florida writes in personally positioned transparent language without taking refuge in academic jargon, making the book accessible to a broad audience.'

- New York Journal of Books

‘Cites are engines for prosperity and progress, but it's essential that the benefits extend far and wide. Florida proposes promising ideas for building stronger cities that offer greater opportunities for all.'